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Tag Archives: processed food

I wish I had a dollar for every time I sang this as a kid. Oh, who am I kidding? I still sing this as an adult!!

I was introduced to bean burritos when I was 7 and we moved to California to live with my Grandparents. You see, back in the late 70’s early 80’s in Minnesota there wasn’t a lot of diversity in terms of food at least not in my house. It was mainly hot dishes, stuffed peppers and meatloaf in our house. When I ate my first bean burrito I was in LOVE!

Growing up I always chose Old El Paso from a can. I loved the taste of it and it was so easy to just open a can (of whoop ass) heat and plop it on a tortilla shell with your choice of fixings. However….

Lately I’ve been on a real food kick. Now I know that some people take the real food thing to the Nth degree but when I say real food I really mean less processed food. I got tired of reading the labels and being astonished at the levels of fat, sugar, salt, carbs, etc. I’ve been making more food from scratch which has been great because I feel better and I know I can control the sodium levels which is good for my husbands high blood pressure.

I decided I wanted to make my own refried beans for once. I mean, how hard could it be? Right? So I found this recipe online and decided to give it a go. The first thing that attracted me was that I could make this in my crock pot. Winner winner refried bean dinner! I kept meaning to make this recipe for a whole week but kept forgetting because of the whole “Soak your beans overnight” thing. I mean listen, I make dinner, clean up and do the dishes and that is usually where my dinner duties end. Last night I had enough clarity of mind (MIRACLE!!!) to remember.

This recipe is so So SO easy!! I mean really!! It’s as easy as that set it and forget it thing you see late at night on cable TV. The thing I like best about this recipe, aside from how easy it is, is that you can control how soupy or dry the beans are and there is no salt except to taste. I forgot to add the garlic when I turned on the crock pot so I just added some garlic salt when it was time to mash the beans. They were amazingly creamy and flavorful!!

Now apparently you need a hand masher for mashing the beans. I don’t own one so I improvised with my hand mixer on low and that worked just fine. One of the other down sides of this recipe is that it calls for cheddar cheese and sour cream and I was really trying to go for not processed but at least it was minimally processed and contained less preservatives.

I didn’t get to take a picture because, well, it’s been one of those days. The baby fell on his head twice today and I lost my Target card. The baby has reached his terrible two’s so he is constantly getting into stuff, climbing and fall off of everything. I can’t tell you how many times the husband told me how much he loved them.

My advice is make these. You will love them. If you have a lot left over freeze them for up to three months. I am going to make a 7 layer taco dip for our BBQ on saturday with my left overs.

I give this recipe 5 wooden spoons for the ease at which this can be made.